How will WiMAX revolutionize the telecom industry?

Many people in the telecom and communications
industry think that WiMAX has great potential to re-
volutionize how people and business connect to each
other. WiMAX promises to achieve the long awaited
triple play of affordable and reliable high speed, re-
liable data, voice and video over a secure wireless
network.

The cell phone is the fastest-selling consumer electronic device in the world. On a global basis, over 800 million cellular telephones are sold each year. More camera-equipped cell phones are sold each year than stand-alone digital cameras.
More MP3 player-equipped cell phones are sold than standalone MP3 players. Rapid development of new technologies is leading to ever more versatile, multipurpose mobile
devices, including Internet-enabled cell phones and PDAs.
Meanwhile, wireless networking and wireless Internet access are developing and expanding on a global basis at a
rapid rate. Booming technologies include such 802.11 standards as Wi-Fi and WiMAX, as well as Ultra Wide Band
(UWB) and Bluetooth. WiMAX, with its low cost and
range of up to 30 miles, promises to revolutionize the wireless industry. Major WiMAX investments were recently
announced by Motorola, Intel, Sprint Nextel and others.
Thus, everyone is writing and talking about WiMAX.

Unfortunately, too much of it is hype and misinformation.
For example, some companies are claiming to be shipping
WiMAX equipment already, while others are claiming that
their gear is "WiMAX compliant" or "WiMAX ready." Even
the WiMAX Forum is doing a great job promoting and honouring pre-standard products with certification while many
big scale rollouts are still on hold due to a criticial pre-standard discussion. Interesting enough, most municipal authorities, especially in the US and ASIA-PAC regions, expect a WiMAX rollout within the next 24 to 36 months. But
all these companies or cities that are considering building
and operating wireless WiMAX networks need to think
about the array of financial and business planning models
prior to developing RFPs and network designs. In order
to avoid past lessons, it's vital that a wireless network be
self-sustainable in some way. For a city, a WiMAX network must be justifiable and create value or cost savings
for the town. For a commercial operator, a network must
be able to attract customers, maintain them and thrive in
a competitive market. Therefore, Roaming becomes also
a major issue within the WiMAX sphere. Organisations
and groups heva been formed, dedicated to encouraging
the development of global solutions for WiMAX roaming
and to reviewing standards to make sure that they truly
address what the consumers are expecting. Consumers
demand an end-to-end solution that is practical and workable amongst network operators—and, most importantly,
once consensus has been developed, that those standards are implemented in a uniform and consistent fashion.

These developments are creating challenges for legacy companies and opportunities for nimble marketers
and managers. Consumers in nations such as Japan
and South Korea have already shown that they are
more than willing to access quality mobile content and
next generation services on a subscription basis, including news, wireless TV, animation and filmed entertainment scripted and adapted for the small, mobile screen.
So WiMAX provides the first key steps toward the wireless holy grail of "broadband access anywhere," which
has so far eluded the telecom industry for many years.

However, vendors and service providers alike must be able to steer clear of the hype, the false expectations
and the market-speak that may cloud, and even derail,
the actual implementation and promise of WiMAX.